Idiopathic ventricular fibrillation (VF) is extremely rare in children who have not previously undergone cardiac surgery. Patients resuscitated from idiopathic VF remain at risk for recurrence. The ...use of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) effectively prevents such recurrences. We report the case of a 12-year-old girl who had a history of recurrent syncope and had survived an episode of VF. Serial studies after prolonged but successful resuscitation, including echocardiography, an electrocardiogram (ECG), and coronary angiography failed to reveal abnormal cardiac structures responsible for VF. No abnormal conduction pathways or abnormal early or late after depolarization were found on electrophysiologic study. The ST segments of the 12-lead ECG remained normal after procainamide challenge. The patient underwent ICD implantation 2 weeks after admission and syncope did not recur during a follow-up of 14 months. This report emphasizes that idiopathic VF may be responsible for syncope in children. ICD therapy prevents the recurrence of idiopathic VF and the associated risk of sudden death.
Degenerate four-wave mixing mediated by ponderomotive-force-driven plasma gratings is demonstrated in the near-infrared regime, which may be used to compensate for wavefront distortion occurring in ...various laser-plasma-based devices.
Death certificates filed between 1987 and 1990 at the Kaohsiung Medical College Hospital (KMCH) were reviewed to investigate causes of diabetic death. During this period, 1,383 patients expired at ...KMCH, of which 151 had diabetes mellitus. The major causes of death in these 151 diabetic patients were infection in 25.8%, cardiovascular disease in 18.5%, cerebrovascular disease in 11.3%, uremia in 8.6% and diabetic ketoacidosis in 1.3%, while diabetes was reported as the contributory or underlying cause of death. Malignancy in 12.0%, liver disease in 5.3%, trauma in 1.3% and upper gastroenteral bleeding in 0.7%, likewise, were among the leading causes of death irrespective of underlying diabetes. However, cause of death in 15.2% of these diabetic patients was undetermined. Our analysis revealed that infection and cardiocerebrovascular disease were the leading problems contributing to diabetic death. Therefore, reducing the risk of infection by strict glycemic control, intensive medical intervention in infection and the proper prevention of diabetic angiopathy-related risk factors and complications are imperative for the reduction of diabetic mortality in our patients.
Film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs) are comprised of a piezoelectric layer sandwiched between two electronically conductive layers that serve as electrodes. The portion of the piezoelectric film ...included between the overlap of the electrodes forms an acoustic cavity. The primary vibration mode of this cavity is that in which sound waves propagate in a longitudinal direction perpendicular to the plane of the electrodes. Unfortunately, the electric field also excites other spurious lateral vibration modes, These spurious lateral resonances near the main resonance of the resonator show up as a ripple in the pass band of filters. Frame-like FBARs have been proposed to eliminate the generation of the spurious lateral modes. The frame-like FBAR structures comprise a frame-like electrode confining a central area. The width and thickness of the frame-like electrode are arranged so that the displacement relating to the piezoelectrically excited strongest resonance mode is substantially uniform in the central area. In such a structure, the spurious resonances have often only a weak coupling. We apply the finite element method to investigate the effect of the frame-like FBARs on the suppression of lateral modes and find the optimal design of frame-like electrodes.
A fully differential CMOS transconductor with 3 V linear input range is proposed. The Gm value of the transconductor is tunable through a current division scheme. A current mode arithmetic method is ...used to adaptively bias the transconductor tuning stage. A 3.3 V 1.1 MHz Chebyshev low-pass Gm-C filter using this highly linear transconductor achieves a IM3 distortion at 300 kHz of -62 dBc for a 2 Vppd input signal. The filter was fabricated with a double poly triple metal 0.35 /spl mu/m CMOS process and consumes 66 mW.
The feature size made by two-photon photopolymerization is described by a threshold model. In a negative photoresist SU-8 we show the linewidth fabricated by this nonlinear process is consistent with ...the prediction of this model.
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